Is culture soft power?
This section, named “ International cultural rights and diplomacy ”, will be dedicated to the understanding of international organizations such as UNESCO, what different countries' institutes do for the spread and maintenance of their culture around the world, and explanations about different topics related to cultural rights on an international level. This first post focuses on whether or not culture can be understood as soft power. So, first of all, what do we mean when talking about soft power? Usually defined as the opposite of hard power, which involves physical, military and economic features; this concept was coined by Joseph Nye, American political scientist known for co-founding the international relations theory of neoliberalism. Soft power concept was introduced in Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power (1990) and in an article published the same year. There, soft power was used to portrait America’s lea...